


proud, to a fault

by mrmime



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, just some dads bickering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:45:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrmime/pseuds/mrmime
Summary: "I'm a fool," he chirps."Yes, but so am I. And so is Dedan, it's why we get along so well.""Do we, though?"





	proud, to a fault

" - I'd again like to extend my thanks. That is, assuming you'd accept gratitude from the likes of me. You'd must be a fool not to, but I've not known you _not_ to be one." 

A harrumph and a purposeful tilt of his glorious head accompanies Japhet's tweeting as he ambles heavily along side his... friend, he might've called Enoch, once. Years and years ago, before things became so utterly odd between them. When and how had things become odd? For his part, his company rumbles with amusement in that way that shakes the ground what's already creaking beneath each shared step of theirs. His friend is a tower of a man, a mountain of flesh and fat and clean-pressed cotton. But Japhet, dressed in his true, magnificent self is nothing to sneeze at, either, certainly. He easily towers over the timid (but not quite-as as his own) men who scramble to part like an anxious sea and allow himself and Enoch to pass. It's just that Enoch, himself, dwarfs Japhet. 

"Come now," the behemoth of a man croons, knowing better than to offer his friend a hand. The last attempt he'd made to give Japhet a stroke had ended rather abruptly with his massive mitt being caught in a rain of infuriated pecks and bites. "You're fit for working yourself into a froth. Of course I accept your thanks - it'd be impolite not to, hm?"

Another huff is all Japhet concedes, too proud to let a sour expression twist his exquisite features despite his foul mood. 

Enoch smiles. "You're embarrassed, aren't you? That pride of yours must be in tatters over this, oh, in complete and utter ruin." 

"If I were in the mood for a veritable playground taunting I would've taken my business someplace else. Someplace I'd expect to have less class, yes, and fewer manners than I'd erroneously assigned to _you_ ," Japhet squawks, the way Enoch just chuckles only piling his frayed nerves higher. Agitated, his wings burst from his sides in a bat of an eye to beat at the giant lumbering beside him, Enoch's arms coming up to protect himself. Fat-lot of good it does him, though, the giant man easily herded towards a wall under the assault. Elsen scramble out of the way beneath them. "Quit your giggling, clown!"

"Japhet - really," Enoch tries, and fails, shielding his big self hilariously poorly. "There's no need for this - please, act your age -"

Japhet refuses.

He's been in a mood since this morning when he'd decided to pay this enormous oaf a visit. It'd all been well and good until he'd actually _arrived_ in Zone 3 only to promptly find himself rather embarrassingly... stuck. In a window, in which he'd tried to land. 

A ruckus of shrieks and flaps had alerted workers below to Japhet's predicament, and the response from there had been quick enough. Not quick enough to save Japhet's shattered ego, but there had been no hope for that. The Elsen themselves couldn't have hoped to pry the massive bird loose alone, so they'd called upon a favor from Enoch. Eager for a bit of positive PR, the fat weasel had, of course, agreed and came to his dear friend's rescue.

Japhet was fished from the window with a bit of wiggling and some reluctant cooperation from the flustered firebird. When Enoch attempted to soothe him with a pet, he'd had his hand mauled. Gratitude came in the form of clipped words. It's now been a few hours since the incident in question, and Japhet's temper hasn't cooled a degree.

"You condescend to me! _Me!_ When I could list off the tip of my beak a slew of occasions on which you've needed rescuing from a tight squeeze. Lest you forgot how my flock became acquainted with your colossal self to begin with!"

His wings fall away from assaulting the massive man when he runs out of steam. Scowling, he tucks them back in towards his sides like he might pretend the childish fit never happened to begin with, head turning away. Enoch escapes without a scratch, maybe a bruise, too large to be dented by a pair of wings even if they are as magnificent as Japhet's - though he still sighs like a wounded animal, gloved hands fixing his askew tie. 

"You know I don't mean to patronize," he murmurs, and even that carries quite a ways down the hall. "No, I don't mean to patronize you one bit, Japhet. It'd be hypocritical at best, and a bit cruel at the very worst. When have you known me to be cruel, my friend?"

He waits patiently, watching the bird who's fallen silent in front of him. 

When Japhet doesn't answer, Enoch tries again to offer a hand into the firebird's space. It's not acknowledged, but it isn't bitten or pecked or otherwise violently rejected, so he takes the ambivalence as tentative permission. His palm finds Japhet's neck, lined with sleek feathers that he knows his friend is oh-so-proud of. Careful not to muss them too terribly, he strokes down a short length of the long trunk once, twice, and a third time, and leaves him be. Japhet looks at him then, and Enoch tilts his head.

"You teased me, though, Enoch, you did! You can't fool me, you got a jolly from my misery," Japhet tweets. His pride aches.

"I won't lie and say I don't find it a bit amusing, that for once _I'm_ not the one needing pried loose," Enoch begins, and he rumbles again when Japhet scoffs. "But, you know..."

Blinking, Japhet eyes the gloved mitt that cups his chin and tips his head up, only to have his sight snuffed out when Enoch's other hand lays over his head. It brushes down the feathers that raise in alarm at the base of his skull. It's not entirely pleasant, given the behemoth's size and strength he seems to forget in the presence of another giant. But some part of Japhet, the part buried beneath his wounded ego, notes drearily that it's only the third time he's let either Enoch or Dedan touch him in what he thinks is years.

The second time was the brief stroking a moment before, and the first was Enoch prying him loose from that damned window.

" - You could've just made yourself smaller and saved us both this whole ordeal."

Japhet almost bites him again right then and there, but the realization tinged with humiliation that floods in keeps him still, warbling pathetically as Enoch laughs overhead.

"I'm a fool," he chirps.

"Yes, but so am I. And so is Dedan, it's why we get along so well."

"Do we, though?" Shaking off Enoch's petting hands, Japhet cranes his head up towards the man he thinks is his friend, still, maybe. The man he'd bitten and beat with his wings, who he'd squawked at, hollered at, called a number of foul things on other occasions. Though his insults never bled into the same malice Dedan's were soaked in. Enoch smiles at him nevertheless. When he begins to peel himself away from the wall, Japhet backs away to let him. Enoch doesn't answer until they're back on their path towards his office, finding the weighty clip-clopping of his friend's hooves to be some sort of nostalgic.

"Yes," he says, simply. "I welcomed you into my Zone, didn't I?"

"So you did."

Enoch hums. "Tell me your thoughts, friend. I can't remember a time when you've been so unwilling to flex that vocabulary of yours." It's a light teasing, a prodding, and it wrestles a huff from the prideful creature to his left. 

"I'm trying my hardest to think of an excuse, you know, for my outburst," Japhet coos as his eyes roam towards the odd, segmented flooring leading to an undersized door. "Perhaps blame it on Dedan's influence, point towards that disgusting pestilence he's gone and swallowed and tell you I can't be held accountable, no, not entirely. But I haven't even spoken to Dedan in so many months, Enoch. I wonder if he believes we're not on speaking terms - he never so much as messages for me."

"Dedan is a very busy man, Japhet."

"Oh, and suddenly we are not?"

"Please, Japhet," Enoch soothes, and Japhet quiets, chastened. "You're so brilliant, can't you see that there's nothing to worry about? Have you ever known Dedan to _refrain_ from confrontation?" 

It's hard to resist a chuckle when the firebird's head bows. For all his brilliance, his pride, and his squawking, Japhet's an anxious creature. Not to the degree the Elsen are, but beneath all those feathers is a little songbird - the only one left of a flock that's been gradually picked off by scavenging cats over the years. His thoughts are astounding, but frantic. His quips are sharp, defensive. His pride is fragile, built on hollow bones.

The comically tiny door creaks open, Japhet ducking down with a shimmy to pop himself inside, not bothering to question how it is he turns and sees Enoch having squeezed his way in behind him, nudging the door closed quietly. They settle in, Japhet wrapping his tail around his ankles and settling on that as a make-shift cushion. Enoch, of course, seats himself at his desk. They both ignore the way the chair whines under his weight. (It's a perfectly good weight, they both think.)

Eventually, a coo worms its way up Japhet's throat, dripping out his beak. "You're right," he tells his friend in a hushed voice, mopped clean of his earlier anger. "I'm not sure what's gotten into me. Am I going mad, Enoch? Humoring these "what-if"s as though they're anything more than that." 

"Silly bird." Laying a hand palm-up on his desk, Enoch thumbs Japhet's jaw when he obligingly rests his head atop it. This is the fourth time he's let Enoch touch him, and the first he's touched Enoch aside from berating him with his wings, an apology laced into the way he rubs his head into the gloved paw. He thinks Enoch accepts, judging by the way broad fingertips scritch the top of his skull.

"I'm glad you decided to pay my Zone and I a visit, Japhet," Enoch coos, sweet and slow like molasses. Japhet's eyes close, fat thumbs gingerly stroking over the lids and the tired lines carved beneath them. He tweets, sounding smaller than he is, feeling smaller than himself. Like one little songbird, perched in a behemoth's kind paws oh-so-carefully cradling him as the giant booms above, promising him gifts and sweets and company for his flock's help so, so long ago. "My doors are never closed to you, nor Dedan. In fact, I might send for him in the near future. It's been a moment since we've all been in the same Zone as one another, much less the same room."

"Yes, a moment."

"Hm-hm. But not today. There's been quite enough excitement for the two of us today, don't you think?"

Enoch's hands still so Japhet can crack those beady eyes open, though they continue with an amused huff when Japhet butts his chin against them. So much for that pride of his. But what's so humiliating about letting your friend give you a pet? Letting someone you think you love, and who you think loves you, yes, treat you nicely. "You just don't want to deal with more than one shrieking fool at a time," Japhet sniffs.

When Enoch doesn't deny it, he huffs but quickly trails off into a quiet, throaty laugh that the Director echoes. His pride will survive another day, pieced together with delicate, broad fingers and a few bandages. Yes, he will live.

**Author's Note:**

> for a reference on how tall these idiots are and also a shameless plug for my ask blog, look [here](http://askthebismarkking.tumblr.com/post/163067538790/bc-i-never-post-anything-i-wanted-to-draw-smth)


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